Officials: Union jail worker sold cell phone to inmate

A maintenance worker at the Union County jail in Elizabeth has been suspended without pay and charged with smuggling a cell phone into the facility, where police claim he sold it to an inmate, county officials said today.

Joseph Pecoraro, 36, of Elizabeth, was arrested Wednesday on charges of official misconduct by the Union County Police after a joint probe involving Union County Jail Internal Affairs investigators. Pecoraro, a senior maintenance and repair worker at the jail since June 1999, was released on his own recognizance pending a continuing probe.

"This is not a common case at all," said Sebastian D'Elia, a spokesman for the county.

"We may have had people try to smuggle in drugs or something like that, but not a phone and not selling a phone. This is the first I've ever heard of something like this," D'Elia said in response to questions about other problems at the jail.

Authorities, noting the arrest is part of an ongoing investigation inside the jail, declined to discuss the inmate to whom the cell phone use was sold and how the cell phone may have been used by the inmate.

According to the charges, Pecoraro brought the phone inside the facility and sold it along with tobacco numerous times to the same inmate between April and Aug. 22, the day he was arrested.

The official misconduct charge is a second-degree offense, which carries penalties of five to 10 years in prison upon conviction.